


Amends

by grayorca, YearwalktheWorld



Series: Skynet: 900 [15]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Wings, Drama, Family Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Has a Different Name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 08:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18246479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grayorca/pseuds/grayorca, https://archiveofourown.org/users/YearwalktheWorld/pseuds/YearwalktheWorld
Summary: Wings AU. Can’t choose your relatives, they say?





	Amends

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Skynet_. Sequel to _Abode_.  
> #whocares
> 
> Faceclaims:  
> Emilia... Emilia Clarke (Game Of Thrones, Me Before You, Solo)  
> Vernon... Alexander Skarsgård (True Blood, Tarzan, Hold The Dark)
> 
> For the record - yes, this particular one-off is without context as yet. Em and Vern have barely had development besides. But part of the beauty of the overall silence our stories have been met with is the freedom to jump around timelines as we see fit.
> 
> It isn’t as if anyone is telling us we can’t.

“...Sorry.”

“For what?”

“For… hurting you.”

“...Anything else?”

“No.”

“Vernon!”

Seated in (a very precarious) place at the break room table, Noah didn’t bother looking up from his folded hands. The placement between his two trine siblings was unusual enough. The sheer trepidation of having Vern sit there, in such close proximity, made him want to hunch and hide under his wings. Not often did he feel the urge, but almost having his throat sliced open by the same android had left its mark - even after those panels had been replaced, the imprint of that memory had yet to fade.

Emilia’s natural brand of encouragement only went so far.

With a scoff that said everything as to her disappointment in that apology attempt, she zeroed in on him next: “And you - _Noah_ , you’re not even making eye contact.”

“No, I’m not.”

Good intentions aside, she had definitely overestimated the extent to which her ‘brothers’ desired to reconcile. Vern had just admitted to as much in one word. And Noah knew his closed-down body language was currently communicating the same.

Did she really think this was a necessary step to take in bridging social gaps?

That bridge could stay burnt, so far as Noah was concerned.

“I apologized. Like you asked.” Vernon said, probably attempting to cut the meeting short and go on his own way once again, while also admitting the obvious - it wasn't even his own idea or suggestion to apologize again. But here they were. “I want to leave.”

“You will once I’m convinced you’ve said sorry, and _meant_ it,” Emilia fired back, staunch in her (misguided) determination to see this matter settled. “Because that was piss poor at best.”

Noah spared that a startled blink, unused as he was to hearing vulgarity from her, but otherwise he kept very still and quiet. No threatening moves whatsoever.

“...How much more can I do that?” Sounding genuinely confused, Vernon grimaced at her, before switching his gaze to Noah. His red kite wings, hanging like tattered robes, gave an irate twitch. “You. Tell me how to apologize.”

Just as painfully blunt as ever, that he actually needed help - to be led through an apology - was telling enough.

Feeling those green eyes boring into the side of his head, Noah wordlessly glanced over. His flat expression said everything he shouldn’t have to in this circumstance.

Emilia disagreed in short order. “It’s not something you can be told how to do, Vern. Did you even stop and think about what you saw? I wasn’t in any danger. Noah isn’t a threat.”

But maybe he was easy to mistake for one - looking so stark, lithe, and full of sharp angles. Perhaps he resembled no more than a two-legged dagger in Vern’s checks-and-balances algorithm. It likened everything in the world around them to weapons of some description or another.

“If you actually tried _talking_ to him, you might realize it.”

“I acted because I thought you were in danger. There was no _thinking,_ or talking.” Pointing a finger at him, Vernon leaned forward, probably not realizing just how threatening he seemingly was being. Or, if he did, not caring. “He seemed to be a threat. I acted on it, like I'm meant to.”

Great. Even the killing machine had more definable purpose than him.

“You moron. Are you that underclocked you can’t stop and reason?” Noah blurted out, half wishing to take the words back the moment they were spoken. Even if he was letting intimidation win for the moment, he resented the idea of sitting there and being put down even more. “Where in your ident program did it recognize me as a threat?”

“Stop yourself there before you make a scene, Conner.” Directing his attention back toward him for a mere moment, Vernon seemed hardly taken aback, just as laconic and moody as ever. “I apologized to you. I don't understand what more can be wanted - when I asked, no one told me.”

“Which was an oversight on my part, and yes, I’m sorry for not telling you about the exercises sooner. But this is a step apart from that,” Emilia interrupted before either of them could dig that hole any deeper. Her blue-green eyes flashed with indignation. “You tried to _kill_ him, Vernon. That rates a little more compensation than a simple sorry.”

“But you won't tell me what - that is.” Showing some of his aggravation, Vernon put his hands up in exasperation, before putting them back down. So long as they weren’t hitting or wringing the life out of anybody, it was an acceptable reaction. “I don't know what you want from me. Tell me, so I can do it.”

With a flustered noise best labeled disbelief, she pinched the bridge of her nose - a learned habit courtesy of Tina Chen. Eyes closed for a moment of thought, they reopened to glare at him. “I told you. Say you’re sorry, and mean it. How would you feel if someone tried to take your life over such a simple misunderstanding?”

At that, Noah did his best not to scoff out loud. The tallest RK900 variant had something of a superiority complex. He didn’t know what it was like to be in real danger, because there was nothing he couldn’t handle. Putting Vern on the spot about his opinion as to what lethally threshold he operated on was next to useless.

“Don’t bother, Emilia. He’s obviously too deficient to compute it, much less care. CyberLife modeled his social relations algorithms after a caveman’s.”

Turning his eyes toward him, Vernon scowled, fingers digging into the table they were seated at, wings raising just the slightest in what might have been some kind of forewarning. “I can understand just fine, and I say sorry often enough. Maybe I just don't mean it.”

Which was exactly what Emilia was asking him to do, wasn’t it? To show some actual contrition for his roguish behavior? Was that too much to handle?

“You ought to,” Noah retorted, almost in a resentful hiss. Little by little, he was making the turn from nervousness to burgeoning hate. He had only agreed to the trust exercises as a means to help strengthen their neglected dynamic. He had thought he would be doing them some collective good.

Instead, for his trouble, he got a knife to the neck and a few unpleasant memories rekindled.

Leaning in, perhaps a little too close, Noah went for a chest jab. Detective Reed would make the same move in such a situation. “And for the record, that is only the _second_ time you’ve apologized to me. Insufficiently, at that.”

Standing up from the table, Vernon continued to glare at him from his new, higher position, hands in fists at his sides. “There are people here who deserve apologies more than you, Conner, for actual grievances. I apologized to you because I was _made_ to.”

“Almost being offlined isn’t an actual grievance?” Noah repeated, slightly aghast, but only for a moment before his temper flared anew. “You need to seriously rethink your definition of sorry.”

Just what had he done to deserve so much clout?

If he had, it must have been a previous version of himself - one whose recollection of said incident had been deleted or lost in a memory transfer. To -89’s knowledge, only four versions wearing his same finalized serial number had ever been produced. The eighty-five tries before had consisted of various spinoffs, failures, dead ends.

How many versions of himself had Vernon gone through?

Emilia, still seated behind him, reached around to touch his arm. “Leave it alone, Noah. He’s not going to negotiate further.”

Her warning was for naught. On the contrary, they felt like they were just getting started. Wasn’t this what she wanted them to do, clear the air?

“It’s not just the trust fall, is it?” Noah growled, sliding out of his chair to stalk closer. “What’s your _real_ problem with me?”

“I don't have a problem with you.” Even Vernon himself looked unconvinced with his own words, but pressed on in the opposite direction anyways. “I reacted without thinking, it had nothing to do with you, yourself.”

“Somehow I seriously doubt that.” Wings up, prepared for a scuffle if the altercation suddenly escalated, Noah clenched his fists. Yes, he was getting carried away, voice a few decibels louder than normal, but at the same time, he couldn’t seem to keep the words in. “You’re as lousy a liar as you are at conversation. Just what did I do to rate as undeserving of a real apology?”

“You didn't do _anything._ Stop, before you embarrass yourself, and us, further.” Glancing out of the break room, checking for eavesdroppers, Vernon let out a scoff. “Put it this way - I have better ways to spend time than listen to you.”

Low blow though it was, it cut his next words off at the ankles.

“I’m not _-_ ”

Noah swallowed, the next remark stalling mid formation. The instant, staticky interference robbed him of making any external sound. Something central in his frame seemed to waver, leaving his knees a touch weaker than before. Blinking harshly, keeping back the new twinge in his tear ducts, he tried to keep his rattled composure.

_I’m not - an embarrassment._

If pressed, he could recite what he was plainly enough. But if that somehow wasn’t good enough for those same people - supposedly made out to be his kin - why did that knowledge have to hurt so much?

He wasn’t made to fail for simply being who he was.

Staring down at him, Vernon seemed to reconsider for a second, before speaking back in their commlink, suddenly just as calm as he had started the meeting off as.

_You're acting like one right now, intentionally or not. The truth is, I just don't care for you. Period. I don't like the way you look like Connor. I don't like the way you act. But it's not even worth getting worked up about you, for anything, so this won't happen again. You're not worth the time, or effort. And the sooner you get used to that, and stop trying to make it seem like it matters, the better off you’ll be. Understand?_

Noah could only gape uselessly. He didn’t, and the stunned silence was all he could seem to give in retaliation. Each word landed in sequence, punching strategic holes in any counter argument he might have readied. With their probability of successful usage sliced to feeble, useless ribbons, the pain seemed to crescendo, then level out to a tolerable, numbing silence.

The rest of the station could have burst into applause at the private speech, and he wouldn’t have questioned how they heard it to begin with. The shunning criticisms stung enough even without the added insult of an onlooking audience.

A just punishment for letting his temper do the talking, it seemed, and yet he couldn’t find the energy to stomach it. He wasn’t even worth the effort of being hated, much less apologized to, he was so far underrated.

Somehow managing to shakily keep eye contact, processors whirling, Noah let his hands go limp. He couldn’t fight with no fuel left in the tank. It felt like it had just been fast suctioned out of him.

_What… why? What did I - do wrong?_

_Nothing, I suppose._ Tilting his head, Vernon took him in one last time, no emotion in his eyes. In fact, he looked almost bored. _You just happen to look like him, too much like him, and your conceited manner is detestable to boot. That's what started this, and now here we are._

 _That’s not…_ Blinking against another twinge behind his optics, Noah grimaced and looked away. He didn’t want to finish that sentence. He didn’t need to.

So what if it wasn’t fair?

There was no sense in whining. It wouldn’t change Vernon’s mind any. He wouldn’t even take any satisfaction knowing he had driven Noah into such a vulnerable state. This was just par for the course.

Belatedly, he heard footsteps set down on the floor, striding around the vacated table, then moving past him. Something brushed against his sleeve.

_Fwack!_

The sound of skin-covered plastic striking something solid and unyielding felt like small compensation. But it was better than nothing.

Timidly, almost, he opened his eyes to see just what he expected - small, diminutive Emilia glaring up at staunch, impassive Vernon. Shoulders squared, she looked in no way intimidated or impressed by his behavior.

“I’ll talk with you _later_. Bugger off.”

Staring down at her for only a mere moment, Vernon made no other final movements or any other words. He simply turned on his heel and walked away at her command.

Noah shut his eyes again.

Again, why? What was she doing right, that he wasn’t?

What was wrong with him?

Head down, he didn’t move even as Emilia stepped back over to his side. Cautiously, one of her hands wrapped around his arm, testing for any resistance, before threading her arm around his side, just beneath where the magnetic wingstruts met his back. He could barely find the will to smile at the mental image of her standing on tiptoe to try and hug him.

Her own dove wings - white as his own - afforded her a wider reach. Silently consoling as ever, she wound one over his far shoulder. The soft, warm feeling it wrapped around him was more a relief than he thought it could ever be. It felt like a safe, secure anchor to cling to.

He didn’t miss the wordless apology lingering behind such a gesture, either.

_Easy. Don’t listen to his rubbish, N. You’re no more worthless than anyone else._

That was gratifying. Another small, stabilizing comfort that felt all the more magnified in how rare they were. Just the slightest bit, Noah let his cheek rest against the top of her head.

Emilia was right. Vernon was wrong.

He wasn’t nothing if he could determine that much.


End file.
